Well, it was either talk about camera phones today (they're super neat, why didn't anyone tell me that?), or embarrass myself in some succinct way, because I don't feel much like writing today. I chose to embarrass myself, because let's face it, that's like 80% of my shtick.
I've mentioned it before that I was very much into what most people would acknowledge as bad music of the pop punk variety*. I look back at the CDs I collected and feel a bit of shame knowing that not only did I listen to what was very much a type of fad music at the time I was listening to it, I didn't even get the ones that the hip kids who were into "real" pop punk condoned. The sole exception to that might be the fact that I listened to and enjoyed thoroughly The Descendents' "Everything Sucks."
Still, there was a line that even I refused to cross for a long while, and that line started at Dashboard Confessional.
I bought one Dashboard song off of iTunes as an integral piece to a school project, a retelling of The Great Gatsby by way of an episode of "The O.C." which is something I'm still actually pretty proud of. Not sure what that says about my productivity or confidence in the things I did post-high school, but that's neither here nor there. I bought the one song, "Standard Lines," because I heard it in the first episode of "Clone High," and it was really perfect for a scene.
This project also led to me purchasing all of Death Cab For Cutie's "Plans," which I was deeply ashamed of at the time, but not so much anymore. Again, though, not important.
I justified these purchases as important parts in my send-up of "The O.C." although it probably reads more like a love letter than a send-up. It's not like I would buy those things otherwise, right? Of course not!
So how I ended up with a purchased, not stolen, digital copy of Dashboard Confessional's "Hands Down" really eludes me. I have dark periods, where I'm not sure what I'm doing, or how ridiculously emo I get. Luckily, those episodes are short, and I don't remember them most of the time (partially by just selective memory retention, but more often by alcohol these days), I just have to live with the consequences.
This was all kind of a prologue to the actual embarrassing story. Sorry for the rambling, but I assume you kind of know what you're getting into at this point, after a near month of posting.
The real embarrassing story comes as the tender age of 18, where I was experiencing what most of the world gets out of the way at around ages 12-15: their first acted-upon crush. I was a horrendously awkward late bloomer, but don't worry, the story gets worse.
I was finishing up what I remembered to be the second date of my entire life. This second date was important, as it was the first date where I kissed the person on the other side of the date equation at the end of the night. That part was cool, if you don't take into account that I was too big of a wuss to just do that on the first date (there was a long courtship prior to the first date, I kind of knew what was expected, so it's not like I was just being polite in feeling out the situation), or if you don't remember the fact that I was a legal adult at the time all of this awkward, nervous freshman-in-high-school-style date was happening.
Still not the embarrassing admission I was getting at (although as I read this out: holy shit, why am I telling anyone this story?). What made this event all the worse was that after we finally parted ways, I went back into my '85 Toyota Pickup, put in a specific mix CD, and went to a specific track.
It was "Hands Down," what may be the only happy Dashboard Confessional song ever recorded. I listened to it, and reflected on the awesome night I had, and felt myself a kindred spirit to singer-songwriter Chris Carrabba, and drove home, fairly happy.
That is honestly something I don't think I've even admitted to my best friend. And I tell him about the most embarrassing moments of my life on a regular basis (or he'll tell me about them, depending on who remembers what from a given night).
Upon reflecting the next day at what I did, I think I reevaluated the feelings I had at the end of a given good date, and how that made me react, specifically, what type of music it made me like.
All told, I went on approximately one date after that one, give or take a couple depending on your exact definition of a date. This means I have a no-date streak of somewhere around three and a half years, which I suppose is another embarrassing admission. This whole post is basically a string of embarrassing admissions, I guess.
But I'm blaming the majority of the things I just admitted, and my romantic ineptitude on this goddamn song:
*"was" is kind of a mislead, actually, considering I'm listening to the last part of Say Anything's "In Defense of the Genre" and the beginning of "...Is A Real Boy" as I type this all out. I still like some of it, and that's yet another bonus embarrassing admission for y'all dear readers.
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